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'Inert' endocrine disruptors

May 2016

Readers of GM-free Scotland will be
familiar with warnings that glyphosate-based herbicides, which are
heavily used on most GM crops, have added ingredients to help
glyphosate penetrate into the plant cells and kill them more
efficiently [1].

Glyphosate dissolves well in water, but
sprayed on a crop without its 'helpers' it would glide off the waxy
outer layer and not much would make it through the fatty membrane
around the cells.

As the weeds around glyphosate-tolerant
GM crops have evolved to become less and less sensitive to the
herbicide, the biotech industry has had to rescue its pet GM
technology by producing more aggressive glyphosate-based
formulations. Most of these added ingredients are detergents
(fat-dissolvers) which disrupt the wax- and fatty- barriers designed
by Nature to protect the plant.

Regulators have allowed added
ingredients in agricultural pesticide sprays to be declared 'inert'
and may be mysterious 'commercially confidential' substances.

The safety of 'inerts' is poorly
studied, usually involving little more than acute, mainly irritant,
properties on eyes and skin.

All this should raise a few eyebrows to
questions such as:

Animals (including humans) eat,
drink and breath. Aren't these going to draw all the agri-chemicals
(including all the ingredients in glyphosate-based herbicides) now
in the air, water and food into their bodies?

How can a detergent, put there to
physically disrupt living defences, be 'inert'?

If a substance is 'inert', why
would it need to be kept a secret?

Science has already raised concerns of
a link between glyphosate and endocrine disruption [2], now a more
thorough study has been published investigating the roles of both the
'inert' co-formulants and the pure weedkiller.

A team of French and Hungarian
scientists used cultured human placental tumour cells which are
well-characterised and recognised as a good model for toxicity
studies. They exposed cells to one commonly-used form of pure
glyphosate, to a range of common glyphosate-based formulations, or to
a range of common 'inerts' in pure form. After 24 hours exposure to
the test substances at well below agricultural concentrations and
well below established toxic levels, the cells were tested for the
integrity of their mechanism of oestrogen/testosterone (male/female
hormone) balance, and for toxic effects on their respiration and
membranes.

Glyphosate didn't induce any toxic
effects. The formulations, however, were toxic at concentrations up
to 141 times lower than agricultural dilutions of 1%, and
individual 'inert' co-formulatons were toxic at up to 2000 timeslower than is used in
practice.

COMMENT The
toxic effects of the inerts seem to interact in an unpredictable and
complex way, because more toxin doesn't make
them more toxic. Perhaps the extreme toxicity
of some inerts has been noted and other secret inerts have been
added to reduce this?

Endocrine disruption was observed due
to glyphosate alone at one-third agricultural dilution.

All the formulations and co-formulants
exerted endocrine disruption at dilutions of at least 800 times more
than that used in practice, and well-below the toxicity threshold.

Note that the real-life effects may be
even worse than the dire picture painted by this study. Only a small
sample of glyphosate types, 'inerts' and the hundreds of formulations
actually in use was tested. Some 'inerts' are only identified by
chemical group not by the specific substance present in the
formulation, and some 'inerts' are not available for research.
Cultured cell-lines are known to be less sensitive to toxins than the
real thing in a human body, and this short-term experiment didn't
address any questions of bio-accumulation (i.e. chronic toxicity) of
any of the test materials. And, the co-formulants used in
glyphosate-based herbicides are used in other agri-chemical
sprays.

The authors were surprised to find that
one of the newer glyphosate-based formulations which uses "Transorb2
technology" (an unspecified form of petroleum distillate) as a
penetrating agent to replace and bypass
the toxicity of the older detergent 'POEA', was actually the most
toxic herbicide of those tested.

COMMENT
Perhaps Transorb2 technology was developed to bypass the bad name
POEA has acquired?

The finding of
significant membrane disruption by everything tested except glyphosate
could have significant implications for endocrine disruption
(besides the cell toxicity it was measuring) because the mechanism
for oestrogen/testosterone conversion is membrane-bound.

OUR COMMENT

The bottom-line
here is that none of the 'inert' substances in glyphosate-based
herbicides (or other pesticides) is actually inert.

This means that:

The acceptable
daily intake (ADI) set by regulators should be recalculated according
to toxicity tests for the commercial formulations.

Since all
'inerts' are endocrine disruptors, there's probably no ADI.

Using
glyphosate alone to set the ADI is a monstrous deceit practiced by
the industry and. perpetrated by regulators.

It's time to call
time on the presence of any mythically 'inert' chemicals in your
food. Start by telling your MEP to take action on the EU regulations
which have approved them.

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About us

Formerly known as the Scottish Consumers Association for Natural Food, Pro-natural Food Scotland was formed in 1996 by a group of concerned people in Glasgow, Scotland. We are funded entirely by donation and run by volunteers. We network with, and support, all like-minded groups and individuals. Our objective is to empower by raising awareness.